Murder in Clichy (15 page)

She pulled out Regnier’s card and called him. She hated to deal with the devil, but perhaps he could help find René, as Morbier insisted.

His phone rang. No answer. Great! Waiting stretched her patience. The little reserve she had, as René often told her. She had to
do
something.

She locked the office and pushed the button for the elevator, a temperamental, grunting wire-framed affair from the last century. She stepped inside and rode it down to the second level. The glass elevator door slid open. She came face to face with Regnier. His freshly shaven scalp gleamed in the chrome yellow light. He stepped inside the elevator car and stood a few centimeters from her.

Fear was the worst thing to show with someone like him. She was afraid he could smell it on her.

“Any reason you don’t answer your phone, Regnier?”

“Did you call with good news for me?” Regnier’s aftershave bothered her. It smelled cheap and metallic. The accordion pleated gate closed and the elevator juddered upward.

“My partner’s been kidnapped. The captor’s threatening to dismember him. Believe me, if I knew where the jade was—”

“I’d be the first to know, Mademoiselle Leduc?” he said. “I hope that’s what you were about to say.”

Had he kidnapped René? She watched his dull black eyes, saw no quiver of response.

“I’m sure you want to help me now.” He hit the out of service button. The elevator halted with a jerk. Her spine tingled. Up close she saw the threads in his overcoat.

Then he leaned closer, and whispered in her ear, “You’re under surveillance.”

First Tessier and now Regnier, but it didn’t make sense for him to warn her. He’d ransacked her apartment.

“By who?”

“We’re not all what we seem,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Was she a pawn in someone else’s power play?

He lifted her chin with his cold hands, so he could see her face.

Only then did she realize that she’d lowered her head and remembered how he’d stared at her on the quai. And that she had seen the butterscotch-colored button in his ear.

“How long have you been deaf?” Aimée asked.

His mouth twisted in a sad grin. “Long enough. Mine is only a tonal deafness at low range decibels.”

Was this a crack in his tough-guy façade? Aimée heard a buzzing sound and his finger shot up, adjusting the clip behind his ear.

“So the RG uses you, like they used my father, Regnier,” she said.
Could she play on his sympathy
? “I can help you,” she said.

“If you help me find my partner.”

He stared at her. In the small elevator with him and his aftershave, she felt claustrophobic. But she knew she should play along with him.

“You have more resources than I do, Regnier,” she continued.

Then his hands circled her neck. Terrified, she stepped back, tried to loosen his thick fingers. How could she have misread him like that?

“Let go!” His grasp tightened. Nowhere to move. It was like before, when she had been attacked. All she knew were those hands squeezing her neck. Choking her. No air.

She kneed him hard in the groin. Hit the elevator service switch with her elbow, then the button. The elevator shuddered and descended, throwing him off balance. He cried out in pain, let go of her neck and knelt on the floor.

She pried the elevator door open.

“
Eh bien!
I’ve been waiting a long time,” said a disgruntled man, on the ground floor.

“It’s all yours.” She squeezed past him and ran into the street. She didn’t stop until she stood on the quai de la Mégisserie, several blocks away. No Regnier in sight. She leaned on the stone bridge, her shoulders shaking and her breath fanning into the air in frosted puffs. How were Regnier and Pleyet involved?

She caught her breath. Lars would know, or he could find out. She walked to the Préfecture de Police, glad she’d kept her fake police ID updated, and entered the Statistics Bureau. The wide door stood ajar, pieces of plaster sprinkled everywhere. Her footsteps crunched across the floor. A man with a mask gestured toward a penciled sign.

Due to pipe refitting, Statistics temporarily in Bâtiment B, second floor cellar.

Several stairways later she found it. And her friend Lars Sorensen, who headed the Préfecture’s statistics department. Statistics, a broad term, provided Lars interdepartmental and interministerial access.

The makeshift office, once a vaulted medieval cellar, consisted of rows of metal file cabinets and several vacant desks. The burnt odor of metal soldering pervaded the office. A green beanbag pillow sat forgotten in the corner.

Lars, wearing army fatigues, leaned back on his chair and drank Orangina. She figured he’d come from the special training he did midweek outside Paris. His prominent jaw and punched in nose made him look like a prize fighter. “Do me a favor, Lars, check what these
mecs des RG,
Regnier and Pleyet, are working on,” Aimée said. “Like you, they could be in reserve special ops.”

“Moi?”
Lars grinned. “Let me see. Every month each commissariat turns in a report, some big patron’s idea so we classify and subclassify them. Like we’ve got nothing else to do, eh? Besides get manicures, trim the commissaire’s ear hairs, and play
skat
!”

Her father had put up with Lars, pointing out not many could ferret the devil out of a hole like him. But she actively liked him. Lars was half Danish. But to hear him talk you’d think he’d been born and bred in Copenhagen, not lived in the working class district of Batignolles since infancy, now with a French wife and three children.

Lars searched in his files. The whine of a sander came from the hallway.

“You didn’t see this, okay
?
”

She nodded.

Lars opened a creaking file cabinet, pulled a state-of-the-art Titanium laptop from inside, and powered it up.

“How old is Pleyet?” he asked, typing in his password.

She noted the last four digits Lars entered.

“Fifties, in good shape, with deep-set gray eyes that take everything in, like a hawk.”

“But that describes a lot of them.”

She remembered something. “Keloid scars on his right wrist.”

He scanned the report. “Did he tell you he was RG?” He rolled his eyes. ”More like Surveillance Circle Line.”

“Circle Line?” she asked. “What’s that? Regnier, too?”

“Regnier’s RG,” Lars said. “But, according to this, he’s under suspension.”

Her mouth dropped.

“Suspension? For what and since when?”

“Let’s see. . . .” Lars hit some keys. “Pretty generic, misappropriation of operating funds last June. The chief discovered it in September.” He clicked more keys, “On the ball, eh, your government
fonctionnaires
!”

So Regnier had gone rogue, but felt bold enough to threaten her. He had sniffed the jade. But how? And that didn’t explain Pleyet.

Aimée leaned over Lars’ desk. “What does Circle Line mean, Lars? How’s Pleyet involved, eh?”

For the first time she saw hesitation in his eyes. He shifted in his chair and the springs squeaked.

“Don’t ask me, Aimée, I can’t tell you.”

“Please, Lars.” She ran her hand through her damp hair.

“I can’t tell you because I don’t know,” he said. “Just rumors.”

“Hinting at what?”

Lars didn’t meet her gaze. A plume of sawdust shot up in the hallway.

“Lars, your papa and mine were friends. Why hold back? Pleyet was on the Place Vendôme surveillance. He looked familiar but I never knew his name. Any of their names. They made sure of that. I want to know his background, at least.”

Lars looked away.

“It’s important to me, Lars.”

“Nothing in here concerns the past,” Lars said. “This comes from Special Branch. They don’t data entry old, failed missions. You know that.”

But she’d figured one thing out. “So this Special Branch Circle Line’s new?”

He nodded.

Wiretapping? But the RG had been doing that for years.

“It’s not all governmental, that’s what I heard,” Lars said.

“Meaning industrial espionage?” she asked.

Two men in suits walked in and gave Lars the eye.

“Of course, mademoiselle,” Lars said, his tone businesslike now, as he closed the folder and shut down the laptop, “when I tally the figures we’ll report the amounts to your father’s insurance agent. The Commissariat will have that information on file.”

“
Merci,
monsieur,” she said, playing along.

The men kept walking and passed them. She heard their footsteps echoing on the metal stairs leading to winding corridors and, eventually, to the holding pens under the Tribunal. She could imagine the sweating stone walls, and the prisoners awaiting sentencing in cells little changed since the Reign of Terror.

“Can’t you do a quick search to see if there’s a report filed on missing Asian jade?”

“You’re looking for missing oriental art?” asked Lars. “You want me to check the list, you mean?”

She nodded.

He sat up, pulled at a drawer that stuck, then slammed it hard and it opened.

“A stolen Rodin sculpture in the 14th from narrow Impasse Nansouty near Parc Montsouris.”

“Try the 17th arrondissement.”

He thumbed through the file. The crinkling paper competed with the low whine of the saw in the background.

“What about missing jade?”

“Hmmm . . . a dope racket and bordello, but that’s as close as it gets in the 17th.”

Frustrated, she pulled out her map, studied it.

“My brother-in-law delivers meat to a
boucherie
in the 17th,” Lars said. “He always bitches that he can’t unload. One time he had to walk with a whole side of a cow through the narrow passage and an old lady fainted right on her poodle.”

She read the map, half listening to Lars, thinking of the threadlike streets of this village within a village, still beating with a provincial life of its own.

“Sorry, that’s it,” Lars concluded.

She exhaled with disgust, leaning against Lars’s grease-stained metal filing cabinet. If the jade was “hot,” no one would report it stolen.

“
Merci
, Lars,” she said, and left his office.

SHE TRIED to make sense of what she’d learned. Regnier, under suspension, had gone rogue, which made him more dangerous. Pleyet, still a cipher, worked for the “Circle Line.” All along the quai, as brown leaves rustled past her on the gravel, she thought about Lars’s change of attitude after he had spoken those two words. She pulled off her leather glove and wrote down the last four digits of Lars’s password on her palm. She’d play with the numbers later.

Time was running out for René. She tried Commissaire Ronsard on her cell phone.

“The Commissaire’s in a meeting,” said a bored voice.

She tried Léo.

“Club Radio,” Léo answered.

“It’s Aimée, any luck with René’s phone, Léo?”

“
Désolée
, so far the antenna’s picked up nothing.”

Aimée’s heart sank to her feet.

“They could have trashed it, or just not turned it on,” Léo said. “Keep your cell phone calls to a minimum, in case they try you.”

“
Merci,
I’ll check with you later.”

She was stymied. The only person she knew of connected to Thadée was Sophie. Sophie
had
to know a detail, a name. Even if she didn’t realize she knew it. But she was in London. Aimée had to reach her. Besides the art gallery, watched by the police, the best place to look was in Sophie’s house.

Thursday Afternoon

AIMÉE MADE HER WAY toward the address, near Clichy, she’d found for Sophie. She passed small Indian shops selling suitcases out on the pavement as well as everything from manicure sets to bootleg tapes. Nestled in between them were Vietnamese florists, and discount clothing stores with jackets on racks bearing signs that read EVERYTHING UNDER 100 FRANCS, as they whipped in the rising wind.

Mothers wearing stylish black suits, or Muslim headscarves over dark robes, hurried little children to the
école primaire
, and a motor scooter putt-putted on the cobblestones waiting before a café doubling as a takeout for Turkish
kebab frites
sandwiches. She ordered a
kebab frites
, paid, and ate the steaming spiced lamb sandwich as she walked down the street.

Aimée found Sophie Baret’s stained-glass-paned front door in tree-lined Cité des Fleurs. The cobbled lane of nineteenth-century houses, each with its front garden, felt like another world: ornate pink brick façades with statuary carved over the lintels of two-story houses. A spill of sunlight illuminated the trellis-covered walkway to Sophie’s house.

Aimée knocked on the open door. “
Bonjour?
”

Something hissed, then crashed.

In the hall, Aimée saw a pink and orange-haired woman, wearing chunky black boots, and a tight, red rhinestone-trimmed dress under a faux fur orange jacket, lugging a snare drum and cymbals.

“
Pardon
, Sophie lives here, right?”

“Some of the time,” said the woman, bumping into her. “I’m Mado, her sister. I housesit when she’s away.” The woman’s face was quite pretty despite the black kohl-lined eyes and red eyeshadow that matched her outfit.

Sisters? Two bookends that didn’t quite match. Mado looked the type who didn’t trust anyone not wearing eyeliner.

“I’d appreciate if you could give me her number in London, something came up.”

The cymbal crashed, causing the dog next door to bark.

“London . . . again?”

“She rushed there after the attack.”

Mado’s mouth widened. “Attack? My sister, the drama queen, does it again! She overeacts to everything,” Mado said. Then paused. “She’s not hurt or anything?”

“Someone broke into the gallery,” Aimée said. “But I’m worried that she fled to London.”

“Then she’s fine,” Mado said.

“But her ex, Thadée—”

“That scum! Sorry, we’ve got a rehearsal right now! There’s a chance a scout for the label will drop by,” she said. “The bass player’s waiting for me.”

A small Mini-Cooper with METALLOMIX spraypainted on it idled at the curb. The long-haired driver tooted the horn.

“Do you have her number in London?”

Mado shook her head as she edged down the walkway. “Shut the door for me, will you?”

Aimée closed it, leaving the thumb of her glove in the lock. Worried that Mado would notice, she blocked Mado’s view and handed her a card. But Mado gripped the drum case and shook her head.

“Put it in my jacket pocket, eh?”

“It’s important that I speak with her.”

Mado nodded, shoving the drum through the opened car door.

“Sophie’s in danger,” Aimée said, “Danger? According to her, that’s the only way to live.”

“You don’t understand,” Aimée said. But she was speaking to a closed car door.

The Mini roared down the lane.

Aimée knocked on the door of the neighboring house to ask about Sophie. No answer. She tried the small house on the other side. A smiling woman wearing an apron, holding a mop, opened the door.

“Bonjour,
I’m. . . .”

“
Non fala française . . . Portugais
!” the woman said, retreating.

Aimée returned to Sophie’s front door, pulled out her glove, and in ten seconds was inside. A pile of mail sat on a stool in the hallway. Water bills, gas notices, British
Vogue
, and postcards of upcoming exhibitions.

The angles and colors of the walls reminded her of a child’s drawing of a house. Mauve walls, terracotta tiles, and antique and 1960s retro furniture jumbled together. Marabou feathered scarves smelling of cigarettes, and an electric keyboard littered the couch in the small living area, indicating Mado’s presence. Aimée figured she slept there. A jam jar of wilted roses, whose pink petals were strewn over an old rattan table, gave her the impression little time was spent on housekeeping. Something she could relate to.

She identified Sophie’s room by its faint Arpège scent. A Vuitton suitcase, partially unpacked, sat on her rose silk duvet, with a bulging cosmetic bag inside. Sophie didn’t seem the type to run off without her makeup remover.

Aimée searched for an address book, a daytimer, anything with an address in London. But all she found was a selection of Clarins eye lift and skin serum cosmetics in the modern bathroom that Aimée wished she could afford.

In the pantry-sized kitchen, a glass coffee
pression
with its tin plunger screwed tight for coffee to drip through was still warm. She found Surgelé
croque-monsieur
frozen food boxes in the trash.

Aimée turned the garbage can over, its contents spilling onto the turn of the century mosaic tiled floor. Among the receipts, she found an airplane boarding pass and a crumpled piece of paper. She spread it open on the counter. A postcard, with a picture of Big Ben, written but never sent. Sprawling black script, crossed out words, and blotched letters. Tears?

She read the fragment:

‘You
bastard!
Promises broken again and again. How can I believe you, Thadée? I sold the paintings, all of them and the exhibition here’s a success. Don’t deal with that scum Blondel. The last shipment passed customs. Yours, Sophie.

The rest was torn off. Shipment . . . art . . . that made sense, but who was Blondel?

Now she had a name, something to check.

And then a footstep sounded behind her. Before she could dive behind the kitchen cabinet something hard was stuck into her ribs.

“Hands up!” Mado said. “You
salope!
Trashing our place.”

“Wait, let me explain . . .”

“Explain to the
flics
,” she said. “Turn around slowly, eh!” Mado was another one who had watched too many movies.

Aimée spun and knocked the gun to the floor. Mado slipped on the frozen food box and fell, as Aimée grabbed for it. “What’s this? A cheap party favor?” She pulled the trigger and a small plastic sheet with the word BANG! on it, dropped from the snout of the gun. Aimée pointed it at her, stuffing the postcard into her pocket.

“The
flics
are on the way,” said Mado, her lip quivering.

“Nice try,” Aimée said. “Listen, as I tried to tell you before, Thadée was murdered. Your sister’s in danger. Real trouble. Start talking to me about this Blondel.”

“Who?”

“The one who strung your sister up to a Turkish toilet because he figures she knows where some stolen jade is. If she knows, she’s in trouble. And she’s in deeper trouble if she doesn’t, because they think she does.”

“What’s that to you?” Mado scowled.

“They’re after me, too! And it’s my job.”

“Who hired you?”

Sirens blared from in front of the house.

Merde
. . . Mado
had
called the flics!

No time to explain to them. She doubted they’d listen to her. For the second time one of the Baret sisters was blaming
her.
That’s all Commissaire Ronsard needed to put her in
garde à vue
.

“You’re as stubborn as your sister, Mado,” Aimée said. “I have to find out about Thadée. They won’t give up, and she’s next.”

Mado said, biting her lip, “An old man was asking questions. A pain in the derrière. I told him to get lost. Like I want you to.”

Old man . . . Gassot?

“What did he look like?”

“Gray hair,” Mado said. “With a wooden leg.”

Gassot!

“You’re in cahoots with him, aren’t you
?”

“When you realize I want to help Sophie, let me know.”

Aimée kicked the back door open and ran. The small yard, enclosed by a rusted wire fence, was filled with wet leaves and tufts of crabgrass. The Portuguese cleaning lady next door was shaking out a carpet and beating it with a stick. A vacuum cleaner roared behind her.

Aimée waved. “I’m locked out,” she said and mimicked trying to turn a key.

But the cleaning lady bent over and whacked harder. She wore headphones and was beating in a rhythm. Aimée pulled an old wheelbarrow over to the fence, gathered her leather coat, and climbed over, ripping her stockings. The spindle-branched thorn bushes offered little protection from observation as she ran behind them. Sirens wailed from the small lane.

Beyond lay the schoolyard containing a climbing structure and a sand box. Perspiration beaded her lip despite the cold air. The
flics
would talk to Mado and, any second, they would come after her. At the next fence, she shoved old clay flower pots together, stepped on them, and heaved herself over. She landed on a tricycle, the handlebars bruising the arm that had needed stitches, but cushioning her fall. And then she stumbled into the sandbox.

“That’s mine,” said a serious-faced child wearing ladybug rainboots. “It’s not your turn.”

“Sorry, of course,” she stood, brushing the sand off her coat and scanning the playground. “Go ahead, take your turn.”

“Big people aren’t supposed to ride tricycles,” the child said. “I’m telling the teacher.”

Aimée didn’t like the flash of blue uniforms she glimpsed through the fence. She thought fast.

“I made a mistake, I’m here to pick up my daughter,” she said.

“You’re in the wrong place. Parents wait over there,” the little girl said.

“Of course, you’re right.”

Aimée edged toward the throng of teachers and laughing students lining up at the school gate.

“What are you doing here?” said a teacher with a clipboard. “You must wait outside, it’s the law. Who let you in?”

“Forgive me, but I had to run to
le cabinet
, Madame,” she said, patting her stomach. Aimée wiped the perspiration from her brow. “It’s morning sickness, but with this second one it happens all day long.”

The teacher’s eyes softened as Aimée joined the waiting parents on the curb. Aimée melted into the crowd, careful to avoid the police cars.